Does anybody else feel that life is unsatisfying for reasons unrelated to capitalism?

Does anybody else feel that life is unsatisfying for reasons unrelated to capitalism?

It's not that my job doesn't define me accurately- it doesn't, but that's not it. It's more that I have no will to do anything and I don't enjoy most of the stuff other people do. I feel as if I am living for nothing at all. The Marxist alienation interpretation of individual ennui feels barely applicable. There's not a unique person inside me demanding expression, in fact I feel empty.

Surely somebody else feels this way.

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I don't believe feelings like this will absolutely, completely disappear under a better system. I think that's delusion on the part of a lot of leftists. But it's still necessary.
What you're feeling is the actual, true struggle in life, as opposed to the brutal barbarity of capitalism. It's actually a kind of luxury. It's pointless to feel guilty for it, but you should fight so that this is the worst thing people may experience, instead of starving to death.
And if they're able to make better of it than you can, be happy, not sad.

I would most likely be jealous, and wish death upon them.

Alienation is a unsubstantiated meme. Worst part of Marxism, just ignore it. Life was miserable before capitalism and will be miserable after capitalism.

I can feel you OP, too many people on the left seem to subscribe to this reductionist view of capitalism that directly blames capitalism for our problems without justifying it.
However that being said, I do think that capitalism is more than a little responsible for the deeply unsatisfying life that most people lead in modern society. When you can't see how your labor benefits you and when you don't have much time to spend working on yourself you'll just end up doing a bunch of bullshit that doesn't matter. And when you look at what has happened to higher education under capitalism it's shocking how nihilistic academia has become, everyone is so caught up in their niche fields; they're so worried about publishing and citations that they don't stop to think why their research is significant. They just churn out a bunch of bullshit so they can secure more funding for more bullshit research.

And when I think about what I want to do with my life I struggle thinking about the future, everything I'm interested in is a dead end and time is running out, money is running short, and eventually I'm going to have to give up on my dreams. I don't think this is entirely capitalism's fault, but I also don't want to accept the systems that run everyone's lives. I just want a way out for everyone.

I'm OP and this isn't me.

Don't drink the water. They put something in it to make you forget. I don't even remember how I got here

Read Marx, cuck.

We're all user, user.

I know, I just didn't want the thread to derail into five people confusing me with that guy and calling me an edgelord.

He's right. I'm and I'm not OP. Should've clarified that. Oops

😭

I just want to die

I feel the same, and honestly I think some of us are just fundamentally broken. Nothing you can really do about it, just accept it and try to carve out the most enjoyment you can despite it.

I feel so alone, so miserable, so used and taken advantage of. I'm more neuroses than man at this point. My dreams are almost completely dead and gone.

I'd kill myself but I can't bring myself to.

Please be more specific. What's getting to you?

I have no friends and people abandon me or take advantage of me.

Same. It's awful.

How old are you?

25

Lord I feel for you. I'm 22.

Do you have a job right now?

How do people take advantage of you?

Yeah, Internet tech support.

Probably the main thing that radicalized me from a lib to a commie

Jesus Christ people are so fucking rude.

While I agree that the underlying anxieties and brute horrors of life aren't caused by capitalism per se, an always surprising amount of it is. Here's Sumner Slichter (labor economist from the '40s-'50s) take on the 1920s:
''[Y]ou don't feel as if you've accomplished anything. And you haven't. You've just made a horse of yourself so someone else can take things easy. You ought to be put in a stable and fed just like a horse."

From one lefty to another, and as someone who for half a year thought a lot about dangling ropes, hang in there. Wait! I didn't mean it like that!
Holla Forums was always one little spot of light where I could find conversation and even argument to engage me. idk what might help, try picking up something creative, like drawing. Don't force yourself to only be pleased when you've accomplished only precisely what you've set out to do, but every little improvement and interesting little coincidence in the creative process.

tree-planter.com/

capitalism itself breeds alienation from other people and with a good dose of survival of the fittest mentality built into the system that sticks in even the most good natured person. I'm not on poltard level but I keep people a good distance emotionally and I don't even trust my family because I know they will shun me should I not tow the line 100 percent.

tldr I don't hate people or wish ill will towards them as we are all trying to survive out here but I don't trust people or form relationships.

No, I don't. I think life is shit but I can completely envision a system there life isn't a shit.

Like, what I hate about life is not some metaphysical shit I can't point out, it's all right there in front of me. The overall lack of purpose, the absence of communal ties, the burden of work, the burden of the family, social restrictions and regulations on everything. I hate feeling so many obligations at once, I hate always wondering if people think I'm a loser for doing X, or too old for doing Y, I hate the commodification of all culture, I hate how every form of leisure has to have that "think of your career!" note on the background, I hate not being able to sit down and do something I like without feeling guilty. I hate how I can become a completely isolated individual if I don't nurture social ties, but I also hate how most social ties are developed at school or work and other restrictive environments where some of the shittiest behaviors are rewarded and become norm. I hate how the socioeconomic system is wired in such a way that I'm 26 and I feel like I've already made enough bad choices to ruin my prospects forever. And so on.

I don't like to wax poetic about the inherent sadness of life. I think that's one of their strategies, to relocate the sources of human misery from the material and the tangible to the spiritual and metaphysical. Life can be good, it can be great, but it isn't. Once you realise that, you realise that demands investigation, and investigation can lead to change. So instead we make it either an existential issue, or a matter of chemical imbalance, or just suck it up and pretend otherwise, because our ideology tells us that you can do anything with your life, and if you're sad it's because *you* failed at it.

I feel the same.

Don't you remember bliss and joy in your life? Isn't that a proof enough that your life can be reorganized (or took a different turn for you at some point of your life) to be filled with those (even under capitalism)

Capitalism makes everything worse, but the real problem for me is that I have nothing in common with the people around me and our culture is still extremely intolerant of certain types of nonconformity.
I was born on the losing side of a slow-burning fight for existence against the powers that be, and the best I can hope for is a painless suicide when the time comes.

Not really. Life is kind of a grey blur, more boring than anything else. Can't imagine caring any more for it under a different socio-economic system.

...

But seriously. I set up tentative plans to hang out with 3 seperate people (that I wanna fuck) yesterday and today, and all of them flaked on me. Why even try.

How does communism introduce purpose?

I don't think I'll enjoy working on anything, and in the post scarcity communist society nobody needs me anymore.

Will socialism eliminate norms? What do you want to do that you're unable to do?

What will be different about incentivized behavior under socialism?

I don't know. I could understand thinking you'll be happy if you didn't have to work as much, and then it makes sense, but a lot of the cultural and social promises of socialism feel like little more than utopian speculation.

Life will still be shit, but life under socialism will be so less shitty in comparison to now that honestly I don't think any of us can really imagine it. It's like between feudalism and capitalism. Which is better? Capitalism and yet we can always be better.

I do. The only time I remember being genuinely happy and careless was when I was a kid on saturday mornings. That was heaven. Why the fuck does people take kids younger than ten years old to school so early in the morning?

Why was this posted?

I don't think you can recapture the happiness you had as a kid no matter what. I didn't have a sex drive, a lot of shit was new and interesting to me, less worries about social standing. Yeah you can be happy as an adult, but it won't be as good or the same as when you were a kid.

Literally the only thing I like better as an adult than when I was a kid is food.

Honestly, I don't think anybody here thinks all existential ills stem from capitalism. The human condition is far older than Porky, after all.

But there is a link, in that capitalism is both cause and consequence of this existential suffering, like a closed-loop system.

Also, Marx's purely materialist interpretation of alienation definitely is lacking.

Maybe try setting up plans because you actually want to hang out?

Be a hedonist. Live for the pleasures of sex, food and RPGs.

Explain.

Good post.

Thank you user

I mean I'd be happy to do that too, not like I jump right to sex, I usually say like let's go for some food or get a drink and hang out.